South Korea posts current account surplus for 39 straight months

South Korea posted current account surplus for 39 months in a row, the longest surplus trend in history, central bank data showed Thursday.

Current account surplus, the broadest measures of cross-border capital flow, was 8.65 billion U.S. dollars in May, up 6.3 percent from a month earlier, according to the Bank of Korea (BOK).

The current account balance stayed in black for 39 straight months since March 2012, topping the 38-month-long surplus from June 1986.

For the first five months of this year, the current account surplus reached 40.24 billion dollars, up 27.9 percent from the same period of last year.

The BOK set its 2015 outlook for current account surplus at 96 billion dollars on the back of low crude oil prices.

The current account surplus had kept a record-breaking trend with 81.15 billion dollars in 2013 and 89.22 billion dollars in 2014.